Michael Slager, the former North Charleston police officer who fatally shot Walter Scott, has been assigned to a Colorado prison that also holds a corrupt Illinois politician and a disgraced former spokesman for Subway sandwiches, both of whom will likely be freed before him.

Nearly two months after learning his sentence for fatally shooting Walter Scott, former North Charleston police officer Michael Slager left the Charleston County jail on Friday morning. His next stop: a federal prison.

Feidin Santana, the bystander who filmed Walter Scott's death, was a more credible witness than the North Charleston police officer who shot Scott, a judge said Tuesday in a formal order that will send the former lawman to a federal prison.

While Michael Slager's 20-year sentence has been viewed as a warning to other police officers faced with using their firearms in the line of duty, some observers doubt the lasting influence of a particularly stark example of excessive force like Walter Scott’s death.

Two and a half years after millions saw a cellphone video of Michael Slager gunning down Walter Scott, the 20-year prison sentence he was handed Thursday will be etched into history as one of the most significant for an American police officer involved in a fatal shooting.

Michael Slager’s defense team on Tuesday used evidence not allowed during his murder trial in an effort to convince a judge that the former North Charleston officer felt threatened when he fatally shot Walter Scott.

What Walter Scott did during his fatal confrontation with North Charleston officer Michael Slager and what the policeman said afterward quickly became the focus of the first day of Slager’s sentencing hearing.

In early December, exactly a year after a jury deliberated and failed to find him guilty of a crime in Walter Scott’s death, former North Charleston police officer Michael Slager will stand as a convicted felon in a courtroom across the street.

A letter from a New York-based civil rights group has urged North Charleston’s mayor and police chief to push for the completion and release of a federal review of the city's police force when they meet with Washington officials next week.

The Justice Department has denied an open-records request for a report about North Charleston police despite an intensifying chorus of voices from South Carolina and Washington calling for its release.

As complaints about police tactics in North Charleston accumulated over the years, calls mounted for an independent inquiry into whether the fight against rising violence had come at a cost to residents' civil rights.

With former North Charleston officer Michael Slager on the verge of learning how much longer he will stay behind bars for shooting Walter Scott, authorities have scuttled a broader push for police reform ignited by the killing.

Just a month after controversy erupted over police accounts of Walter Scott’s death, Charleston County sheriff’s officials faced possible backlash about why one of their own deputies had shot a man in his home, leaving him paralyzed.

Michael Slager now sits in jail as a convicted felon, much like the person who occupied his cell before him. But unlike Dylann Roof, the mass killer whose death sentence was broadly expected, Slager's fate will remain a mystery until a judge decides it.

Former North Charleston police officer Michael Slager pleaded guilty Tuesday to violating Walter Scott’s civil rights by shooting the fleeing black man five times — a sudden shift after insisting for two years he had gunned down Scott in self-defense.

What experts and North Charleston police officers can say during a civil rights trial about former lawman Michael Slager's memory lapses will be discussed during a hearing next week, according to court documents filed Thursday.

Walter Scott's relatives have no public events planned for the anniversary, family attorney Chris Stewart said. Instead, Stewart added, the ones most affected by the shooting are focused on one thing in the coming year: getting a conviction of the former officer, Michael Slager.

An ongoing audit at the state's crime lab has revealed more than a year and a half of faulty testing of evidence in shootings, leaving attorneys across South Carolina to grapple with fallout that could disrupt prosecutions.

Correction: Court documents show that more than $6,600 was paid for various expenses related to witness Feidin Santana before and after the trial, not $19,000 as previously reported. The documents incorrectly listed some as "per diem," or per day, payments for certain time periods, which inf…

Michael Slager's chief defense attorney said he met Friday with Department of Justice officials in Washington to critique how the civil rights case against the former policeman has played out, not to hash out an agreement to end it.

A lawyer for the North Charleston officer who shot Walter Scott repeated a call this week for an examination of whether the lawman's prosecution was sparked by a "rush to judgment" amid national furor over police practices.

For a second time, the former North Charleston policeman who shot Walter Scott has said he's too poor to pay for his own lawyer — a plea to free up public money for his defense as his second murder trial nears.